Читать книгу Women of History: Selected from the Writings of Standard Authors - Various - Страница 12

Table of Contents

[B.C. 42.]

PLUTARCH.

ORTIA, the daughter of Cato of Utica, was learned in philosophy, had a great and lofty spirit, joined to good sense and remarkable prudence. She was much attached to her husband Brutus. Of this latter one extraordinary instance is on record. She had reason to know that something weighed heavily on the mind of her husband, but she did not wish to interrogate him until she could prove by experience what she was able to suffer in her own person. With this view she took a small instrument with which the barbers of the time used to pare the nails; and, having dismissed from her presence her woman and servants, she inflicted a deep wound in her thigh, with the consequence of a great effusion of blood. The severe pain threw her into a fever, and Brutus having been thrown thereby into great grief, she addressed him thus:—"I, the daughter of Cato, was given to you, Brutus, not to be a partner of your bed and table only as a concubine, but to be the personal sharer in your fortunes, whether good or bad. As to your part of our contract of marriage, I have no cause to complain; but, on my side, what proof have I to offer of my devotedness to you, and how I could prove my love to you, if I did not know how to bear with constancy a secret infliction or a misfortune, which there might be any reason for keeping from the knowledge of others? I know that the feeble nature of women unfits them for keeping a secret; but good training, Brutus, and the conversation of good and virtuous people, exercise an influence over women's minds; and, as for me, I have that advantage in being the daughter of Cato and the wife of Brutus. Yet even to that I could not trust myself, until I had satisfied myself by experience that I was myself superior to pain and suffering." And having finished these words, she showed him her wound, and told him how she had inflicted it to prove herself. Brutus was astonished when he heard these words; and, lifting up his hands, prayed heaven for success to his enterprise, that he might be worthy of such a wife as Portia, whom he accordingly proceeded to comfort according to his power.

Soon afterwards Cæsar was killed, and Brutus, despairing of a fortunate issue to the affair, resolved to quit Italy, and so betook himself on foot to Elia, situated on the sea-board. There Portia, being to part from him and return to Rome, she tried to conceal the sorrow which preyed upon her heart; nor would she have failed in this, had not a picture which she saw proved too much for her resolution. The subject was taken from the Greek history, where Andromache accompanied Hector to that part of the city from which he was to issue for the war, and the representation included the incident, that while Hector returned into her hands their infant, the eyes of Andromache were fixed upon him. The similarity of the position of the parties to her own forced her to weep, and every time she returned to take another look, the tears burst again from her eyes.

When she heard of her husband's death, Portia made up her mind to die, and her intention by some means having become known to her friends, they watched her that they might avert so fearful a catastrophe; but she found means to elude their surveillance, and the device was strange. She snatched from the fire a handful of red-hot charcoal, and forcing it into her mouth, which, with wonderful resolution, she held firmly shut, she was choked to death.